


One Unknowable Thing

by Destina



Category: Band of Brothers
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-14
Updated: 2014-12-14
Packaged: 2018-03-01 12:10:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,982
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2772509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Destina/pseuds/Destina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dick Winters knows almost all there is to know about Lewis Nixon.</p>
            </blockquote>





	One Unknowable Thing

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dancinguniverse](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dancinguniverse/gifts).



Sometimes in the night, when the nothingness of his life got the better of him, Nix thought back to one particular morning in Bastogne. Snow had caked the tarp over his foxhole, and ice formed at the edges of everything -- tree roots, damp socks, Nix's dead heart. 

Every morning Dick would get up, crack open the ice which had formed over the water carefully set aside for his rituals, and shave. Nix would push back the tarp and watch the clean, precise motions of the blade sweeping across Dick's reddened skin until it was pristine again. 

His own stubble felt frozen to his face, and if it was going gray, he was pretty sure it was because of the ice crystals forming in it. Dick always regarded him with those honest eyes - never judging - and offered him the razor. Nix always refused, until one morning when the urge to climb up out of the muck was overpowering, and for Dick, he'd wanted to try. 

He'd done the best he could, but he hadn't had a drink in six days, and his hand wasn't steady. He'd only shaved three quarters of his face when the blade slipped and blood oozed out, sluggish, like maybe it was just as exhausted as the rest of him. Like maybe it didn't have the energy to try anymore. 

Dick had pressed his fingertips against Nix's throat and held them there until some warmth bled from his fingertips back into Nix's frozen skin. His pulse beat steadily against Dick's hand, an echo caught and tapped back.

Nix remembered that clearly, the same as he remembered the look on Buck Compton's face when they'd loaded him into a truck and sent him far behind the lines. He remembered what it was to see men crack open, their guts pouring out into the snow, and how sometimes those cracks were invisible, even though the damage was severe. Nix thought maybe he cracked open too, back there in the forest with trees splintering all around him and men dying in the darkness; he cracked open, and ever since he'd been sealing the breach as best he could with whiskey, pouring it down and waiting for his heart to float to the top. 

It never worked, even when he pressed two fingers to his neck until he could feel his heartbeat again. 

:::::

Demoted, Dick had said. Like it meant something disgraceful; like it was a black mark on Nix's record. 

Like it meant anything except leaving that pit of fawning kiss-asses at Regimental, and coming back to Battalion where he belonged. 

To celebrate his demotion, he drank all the remaining whiskey he'd hidden away in Dick's footlocker, and then wrote four letters of condolence to the families of men he'd only known for a few hours. He looked at their names on the roster and tried to put faces to the dead ink, but the young ones were starting to all look the same to him, earnest and eager and fucking scared out of their minds. They'd been scared of dying, scared of falling, scared of the noise and the blood and the danger, and Nix hadn't felt a goddamned thing. Not when he was falling, and not when he was crashing to the ground. Not when he was staring up at the plummeting fireball which had almost taken him. 

There just didn't seem to be anything that could touch him, not bullets, not mortars, not even planes falling out of the fucking sky. Other guys would be grateful. Nix was...well, he was definitely not getting what he deserved, no matter how you looked at it. He figured it was well past time for someone else's turn to stand in the rubble and look up at the sky at the flaming remains. Being lucky just meant having to face another day, and another one after that, and eventually he wouldn't be drunk enough to go from one to the next anymore. 

He let Harry and Lip and Speirs pull him into a card game where he won most hands, and cared less than nothing about the game or the conversation. They were men he respected, would have given his life for, but they were like dark blurs on the edge of his vision. 

Eventually he fled alone into the night, shattering windows, finding nothing, feeling even less. 

He finished his evening in the wine cellar of Battalion HQ - which had clearly been the house of a Nazi with great taste, because their wine collection was outstanding - drinking several bottles of 1929 Chateau Latour while he contemplated the look on Dick's face when he said "demoted." It was pretty rare for Dick to look at him like he was sorry for him, rather than just worried. Not that he cared. He probably deserved some judging. 

There were still eleven letters to write. But there were at least twenty bottles to drink, so it would all even out. 

He sat there on the dusty floor in the dark, surrounded by dead soldiers and composing letters in his head, until the cellar's single naked light bulb clicked on overhead. He squinted at the looming dark shape on the stairs. 

"Jesus, Nix," Dick said. He kicked aside a bottle and crouched beside Nix, and there, yeah, there was that look again. "You're sopping wet. What the hell happened to you?"

"The second world war," Nix said. He took another sip from the bottle in his lap and looked Dick over. It had to be past midnight, and he was as picture-perfect as ever, not one hair out of place. "As pink elephants go, you are a major disappointment." 

"I'm sure you have several points of comparison. Come on, up you go." He lifted the bottle from Nix's hand and set it aside, and somehow maneuvered Nix to his feet. They struggled up to the first floor, Dick's steady hand on his back preventing him from breaking his neck on the narrow stairs, and lurched down the corridor to Nix's rooms. 

Dick's fingers were warm when they peeled his cold, soaked uniform from him. Nix had no resistance left; he didn't even give enough of a damn to be ashamed. Dick toweled him down, dressed him in clean skivvies, and shoved him under the covers, which smelled like bleach and stale perfume. 

"Goddamned krauts," he mumbled. "That's twice they've tried to kill me. Not my fault the bastards can't manage it." He twisted around and took hold of Dick's wrist, pulled him in until Dick was sitting on the edge of the bed. "You remember what they said at Toccoa about the perfect foxhole?" 

"Deep enough not to get your head blown off, shallow enough to climb out of in a hurry." 

Nix curled his fingers around Dick's, not holding on so much as making sure Dick was real. "This's a pretty deep one, Dick. Pretty deep." He flopped back on the pillows, but his hand had a mind of its own, and Dick's hand stayed where it was. Anchor, tether, leash - all of those, or none at all, but Nix couldn't bring himself to let go. 

"Then stop digging," Dick said softly. His fingers tightened on Nix's hand. 

In the morning, Nix woke to too much sunshine, and a completed pile of letters on his desk. Dick's precise, careful handwriting filled each page with sincere platitudes about sacrifice and heroes and patriotism. 

It wasn't that Nix didn't believe it anymore. It was that he wasn't sure he ever had. 

:::::

Dick was pretty perceptive about the men. Always had been, right back to Toccoa when he'd known how to motivate men who were an inch from giving up, while Nix practiced trickery and deception, the hallmarks of an incipient and stellar intelligence officer. 

But Nix was perceptive about Dick - had to be, because no one else bothered, and keeping Dick Winters alive was about all that still mattered in Nix's book. 

He noticed the way Dick made the rounds after they found that camp full of living dead men. Even the NCOs retreated into themselves, spooked by a kind of inhumanity they'd never believed could exist in the world. Dick spoke to them, brought them back around, gave them tasks and duties to occupy their minds so they couldn't drift back toward the horrors they'd seen. 

Dick spoke of other camps, of future missions, but all Nix could see was the shadow of death in his eyes. He drank two bottles of cheap whiskey, but the reaper still seemed to be standing nearby, waiting his turn. 

He went to Dick by lamplight that night, found him with boots off and reports in his lap. Without a word, he lifted his third bottle of local brew from Dick's mantel and sat down in the armchair opposite Dick. 

They watched each other for a while, Nix seeing all the careful composure Dick had built around himself, and Dick seeing God knows what in the jacket that hung from Nix's shoulders now, in the ten-day growth of beard and the bruises under his eyes. 

"Where're we goin' in the morning?" Nix asked, though he remembered the name of the town perfectly. 

"Thalem." Dick had learned to pronounce it in the hours since Nix had been by last. Probably been corrected half a dozen times by well-meaning junior officers. 

"I'm reliably informed that when I get there, the kid that runs the APO will have my little problem solved." 

"Which one?" Dick's eyes were sparkling. 

"Well, I'm pretty sure he's not planning to procure me a wife - not that I think the absence of one is an issue, mind you." Nix took a long swallow of the bitter whiskey and watched with pleasure as a smile spread across Dick's face. 

"Must be a relief, knowing you won't have to drink the local swill much longer." 

Nix looked down at the German label, which belonged to a brand just as expensive as Vat 69 no matter how much he disdained it, and switched tracks back to the conversation they hadn't been having. "Don't get married, Dick. And if you do, definitely don't get a dog. That's where the real heartbreak lies." 

"Wasn't planning on it." Whenever Dick looked at him that way, like a puzzle without any obvious answer, Nix wondered why in the hell they were even friends. 

"No? War's winding down. Just a matter of time, now." 

"Maybe. But there are still ways to be useful. Better not to be attached until all those choices have been accounted for." 

"Here's to that." Nix lifted the bottle, then rested it in his lap without drinking. He knew now what that was in Dick's eyes. It wasn't the shadow of death gone by, it was yet to come. Dick Winters, the man who never ran away from a fight, who wasn't going to stop until it ended for him, one way or another. 

At least now, Nix was in a position to be there, no matter how it ended. 

"You should stay here," Dick said, eyes dropping back to the pile of official business in his lap. "Grab some rest. I'll probably be working the rest of the night." His hair shone like a copper penny in the gentle lamp light. 

Nix wanted to stay there, in Dick's bed, with Dick working and breathing and being strong just feet away. He wanted to crawl inside Dick's well of calm and never come out; he wanted to be reassured that they were close to the end, now. That it was all going to add up to something, that the death and decay and horror were going to rumble slowly to a halt, like a German tank losing tread. 

"Nah," Nix said. "Kathy says I snore."

"That you do," Dick said, that same smile curling up toward his eyes. "Used to it, though." 

Foxholes and hard ground, tiny rooms, shoulder to shoulder in trucks and on trains, of course Dick would be an authority on Lewis Nixon. Dick knew everything there was to know about him. Everything but the most important thing. 

Nix heaved himself to his feet. "Don't sit too close to the fire while you're covered with all that paper." 

"Probably the best use I could put it to," Dick answered, and Nix was pretty sure he wasn't imagining the longing there. 

"Major Winters, you're not allowed to set fire to Army property." 

"Very sensible reminder. Someone should put you to work in Operations." 

Now it was Nix's turn to smile. That demotion was a gift in more ways than one. 

Dick shuffled the stack around like it weighed ninety pounds. "Good night, Nix."

Nix gave him a tiny salute, and headed back to his own rooms. He took the bottle with him. Sleep wasn't exactly what he was after, so he sat up in a corner chair by the window, watching a darkness broken only by the glow of soldiers' cigarettes. The future played itself out in front of his wide-open eyes, every branch of the road ending in a place he couldn't quite see. 

::::

The war came to an end with Japan's surrender - really ended, not just halfway anymore - and Nix considered what that was going to mean. He'd been ready to follow Dick wherever he thought he might go, and now Dick was free, and that wasn't going to be his path anymore. 

He'd always been stuck to Dick's side, whether Dick wanted him there or not. Someone had to look out for him. But maybe that wasn't Nix, anymore. He'd already made his offer. There wasn't anything left to do but wait for Dick to say no. 

He left word at HQ that he was going to do a little reconnaissance - it gave him a convenient excuse to vanish for a few hours, even though he wasn't S-2 anymore - and headed out for a patch of forest overlooking the lake, adjacent to an abandoned mansion. It was a nice enough place, but the grand house had been looted not long after they arrived, and it was just a shell of what it once was. 

Nix settled in the grass without a bottle, sunglasses set firmly on his face, and went about trying to understand what Dick saw in the bright, cold water. 

It rippled at him, serene, but refused to provide any answers. 

Best that he learn to let go now, before Dick cut the ties completely. They'd be back in civilian life soon. A man like Dick Winters wasn't going to need a hanger-on like Lewis Nixon, a competent officer but mediocre soldier with no other discernible skills. No matter where he went, it would become obvious that he liked the whisky a little too much, and hated everything about his life even more than he liked the whisky. 

He'd been lounging at the lake long enough for the sun to settle past the midway point overhead when he heard leaves crunching on the path behind him. No question who that would be. 

"Sorry I slipped the leash," he said, tilting his head back to see Dick's upside-down face.

"Figure you're entitled to some time to yourself once in a while. Since you don't share my love of morning swims." Dick came around and sat down in the grass beside Nix, but facing him. "It's good for you. Probably the most daylight you've seen in months."

"Now, now," Nix said, but they were smiling at each other. "How'd you find me, anyway?"

"Wasn't hard. Didn't figure you would go far. Too much effort. Plus you didn't take a jeep." 

Nix snorted a laugh and leaned back on his elbows. "Those outstanding deductive leaps explain why you get paid the big money." 

They sat in silence, but it was a different kind of silence than Nix was used to. There was a question unsettled between them - or at least, one question that had been asked out loud. Nix had been steeling himself for that answer for days, waiting to be taken apart with a single word. 

"You planning to keep up this pattern of emptying bottles single-handed when you get back home?"

Now there was a question with an easy answer. "Probably. Since I didn't start when I got here, you know. I come from a fine tradition of knocking back a few." His father's face swam before him, not much of a mirror of his own, but close enough - they shared a competence curse, and a love for booze to even that out. As an inheritance went, it wasn't much, but it would doubtless last longer than the money would. 

Dick sat forward a bit, hanging his arms over his knees comfortably, and looked at Nix. Nix looked back. Why not. There wasn't anyone here judging him. Dick never had, and he had to try to memorize that face, the way so much was always happening behind those eyes before any words emerged. 

He'd come to accept that he never wanted the war to end, because that end would only bring all other endings, and he'd have to face it sooner or later. 

"What is it you really want, Nix? After the war." Dick, direct and to the point as always, and not especially gentle about it. And there it was: the one unknowable thing about Nix, an unacknowledged truth he wasn't sure Dick would ever be ready to hear. 

Nix threw his head back and stared at the sky. He didn't want to go home, and he couldn't stay in the Army; there wasn't any point to it. He'd lost a wife, gained a wealth of useless knowledge, and his liver was about to concede defeat in an epic but unwinnable battle. 

"I don't remember how to want things," he answered. "Seems like a waste of effort, given the circumstances and all." 

"But you want to give me a job." Nix turned his head to look at Dick. "You want me to follow you back to the States."

"Well, sure. That's different."

Out of the corner of his eye, Nix could see Dick smoothing down the seam of his trousers over and over. "Maybe not so different. Because if I thought you wanted something for yourself, I might take that job." 

Nix sat up straight and yanked off his sunglasses. "Dick, don't - don't make this about me, I'm not-"

"It was always about you, whether you knew it or not." 

Nix smiled, but it was the wry kind of smile, meant to keep others off-balance. "Let's say I have some short-term goals, then. Good enough?"

"It allows us both some options." Dick considered Nix's smile for a moment, which had the effect of wiping it out altogether, leaving Nix uncertain about what to replace it with. A moment later, Dick relaxed his posture and leaned forward, and then his lips touched Nix's - sure, soft, and so sudden that Nix drew in a shaky breath against the surprise of it. Dick's hand curled around the nape of his neck, and Nix's thoughts scattered completely. 

He'd never been kissed with such careful deliberation. Nix let Dick in, sighed into his mouth, tipped his head to deepen that kiss when Dick's hand tightened on the back of his neck. 

When they parted, Nix was shaking, and the light was too bright, and all the jumbled pieces of his world were trying to assemble into a picture which made no sense.

"It's a bad idea, you know," Nix said, because the soft fondness in Dick's eyes was killing him. 

"We'll see about that," Dick answered, his thumb stroking across the fast pulse at Nix's throat, where his heart was beating again. 

::::

He met Dick at Penn Station two weeks before Christmas, with a sea of uniformed servicemen milling all around them. 

"Hello," he said, pretty certain that though he'd mostly forgotten what it was to feel joy, this was as close as he was ever going to get. 

"Hello." Dick was heart-stopping in that damn uniform, always had been. 

They made the rounds: a stop to meet Nix's mother at her bedside in the hospital, and then a night of drinking and carousing that put a grimace on Dick's normally placid face. It wasn't like Nix hadn't warned him; it wasn't like Dick didn't know. Even so, Nix put the glass down halfway through the evening, and didn't pick it up again that night. 

Nix had booked them a room at the Plaza, the kind of room that made Dick's jaw drop open and his eyebrows furrow in the middle of his forehead. He could practically see Dick backing away from the opulence, as Nix closed the door and loosened his tie. 

"Money has to be good for something, and in this case, it's privacy," Nix said, and when Dick rounded on him, he knew the message was received. 

They'd had one kiss in the middle of an Austrian field, a promise of all the things Dick demanded Nix learn to reach for again, and distant kisses were never as good as they were remembered to be, drenched in sunlight and nostalgia. But Dick's kisses were slow and thorough, the kind of kisses meant to dismantle every false notion Nix had about how this was going to be.

Nix took great pleasure in peeling Dick's starched, pressed, useless uniform from his slender body and unveiling the man beneath. He'd seen it before - all of it, and he'd never been the kind of man who'd avert his eyes - but he'd never been granted permission to touch. Now he touched; he ran his hands down Dick's sides, tracing muscle and prominent ribs, and gentling his touch when Dick's breath caught. 

"You're su-" Nix never managed to finish the question, the only question left to ask, because Dick kissed it away, fingers hooked into Nix's belt loops and drawing him back toward the bed. 

Skin to skin, and still in dog tags - neither of them had taken them off yet, which struck Nix as funny, and when he touched them, he saw the gleam in Dick's eye - they settled together, moving, watching, hearing for the first time what they were going to be, together, and neither backing away. It wasn't in Dick's nature, and Nix had wondered if he'd be brave enough to follow Dick, this one last time. 

Dick moved against him, and startled the climax out of him, so intense that he almost missed the white-hot spark of need in Dick's eyes, and the way he squeezed them shut and pulled Nix closer, seeking something, seeking - more -

Nix would have given him anything he had to give, and hunted down anything he didn't have, just to preserve that moment. 

When they were sated, twined around each other in luxury Dick was surely going to distance himself from later, Nix pressed a kiss to his shoulder. "Did I mention my father wants me to make something of myself?" he asked, nose buried in the curve of Dick's neck. 

Dick shifted, pulled Nix closer, and kissed him on the top of his head. "You already did," he said softly. "Nothing to prove, now." 

Nix closed his eyes and remembered: frozen earth at his back in a muddy foxhole; ten thousand dusty bottles winking at him from orderly shelves; Dick Winters, the center of everything, staring at a dead soldier in the middle of a bloody field. 

It was too much to hope for, that war would have brought him all he'd ever wanted. Too much, because it could never last; there would be consequences, and this moment with Dick was finite, he knew. 

All of it was out of his control, but his spine was uncurling, no longer frozen. Dick was steady and sure, and Nix would be, too. He would be. 

He did have this one last thing left to prove.

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to my two fantastic betas, gwyneth and killabeez.


End file.
